Category: General

I thought at first it was just me. I thought, “Dude, you’ve lived away from huge herds of people for too long.” Well, that is a true statement. I thought I was just too sensitive and reactive to strange noises. The difference between living in a house in the mountains, to living in an apartment in the middle of a city.

I thought I’d adapt in time…

Well time has passed, and I’ve adapted. BUT there’s only so much I can do without gouging my ears out.

The problem:

Guy downstairs, he’s really kind of messed up. But he’s not the problem. It’s his son, who has a girlfriend who lives her life like she’s in a telenovella. I’ve come to believe that it is physically impossible for this woman to walk past anything with hinges and not slam it. Doors, Cabinets, Car doors, Car trunks, you name it. About the only thing that she can’t seem to slam shut is her legs.

She seems to think that arguments are foreplay. And from the many, many, many, sleepless nights I’ve had she seems to like sex a lot. 

Picture a Fran Dressher voice, only not as nice… Screaming obscenities, punctuated with “Don’t you love me?” At the top of her lungs all night, every night. When she decides to have a fight, (easier to count them times when she’s not fighting, screaming, and bitching.) she starts by slamming every available door in reach. We’re talking slamming doors so hard that the whole building shakes. There have been a few times when my bed moved like we were having an earthquake. But no it’s just this tempestuous ball biting bitch.

That’s not all. 

When she slams the front door and storms out of the apartment downstairs she always comes back. Usually to find she’s locked herself out of the apartment (or been locked out) then she starts beating on the door to be let back in. When that fails, she starts pounding on the bedroom window (right below my window) or she climbs over the railing to their patio then starts pounding on the sliding glass doors.

If she were in a house, it would still be unseemly but it wouldn’t be keeping everyone in the general area awake with the pounding on the doors and windows while screaming like a harpie, (maybe banshee is a better description.)

Last night was particularly bad. She didn’t end her howling until well after 2 am.

This was the fourth night in a row.

This morning after I called out sick at work, I did get a couple hours of sleep. Only to have her start bitching and screaming at 5 am.

Yup, I was awakened AGAIN. 

I thought about yelling down to her boyfriend, “Thow a bone in her or buy her a big fucking vibrator!” In the end, I though better of that course of action. Instead, I showered, shaved, had breakfast, then went to the property manager’s office.

We had a nice chat. Turns out that she’s well aware of the problem and the circus is being evicted on Friday. Hum, apparently I’m not the only one in the complex who’s tired of not having any sleep. So I’ve been thinking about buying a patio chair and plenty of popcorn for the last episode of this Telenovella. I can sit on my patio with my feet up, a stiff drink, popcorn, and watch the Sheriff toss this trash out on the curb. Hopefully there’s going to be violence, so the whole lot of ’em get tossed in jail, and that goes for her nasty little dog too!

 I think there’ll be a block party when these people go.

I know I’ll dance a little jig, just before I lay down on my bed for well deserved sleep.

Had to put Sundance down today.

14 years, through thick and thin, a great pal, who loved me unconditionally. 

He never failed to bolster my mood, no matter how bad. He always had my back and was a clown (in a good way, not the icky painted face way.) 

The photo is, “But Dad, you weren’t using the TemperPedic”

My stoner, surfer boy died in my arms, in much the same way our relationship started, so many years ago. His back against my chest, one arm protectively over him with his head on my other arm. 

This last year has been hard on all of my family. But the last few months took their toll on Sunny. As an older dog that didn’t know he was older he still gave me THE LOOK when I found and destroyed his mushroom stash in the yard. 

Yes, He really was a stoner dog and his drug of choice was ‘shrooms. He’d eat them, get stoned, throw-up, then eat some more. Spent a bloody fortune in vet bills trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with him. Finally by shear luck he tossed his cookies in the vet’s office one day, and the vet pointed to the bits of mushrooms and said, “Here’s your problem.”

Thus began years of my scouring the yard, Spring, Summer, and Autum for the inevitable stash. And my having to endure Sunny’s dejected look when I found it. He’d actually ignore me for a day or two after I uprooted his most recent “Happy Stash”. 

It became a game between us and I knew that he’d always manage to be one mushroom ahead of me.

When Sunny was young, he’d lead visitors to the “Treat Cabinet”, he was always a lovable mooch conning guests to sneak him nibbles from the table. He wasn’t obnoxious about it, he’d just give you the “Poor Abused look”. He loved Popcorn and carrots. 

As he approached middle age one of his hips would bug him in the Winter. Rather than drugs, we’d use a heating pad. He knew which cabinet his heating pad was in, and on those days he felt he needed it, he’d sit with his nose on the cabinet door until I got the message. 

As I moved deeper into middle age, we’d share the heating pad when my shoulder would start bugging me. Sunny eventually decided that we needed two heating pads because my shoulder and his hip would often act up on the same days. He actually made his desire known by pulling the heating pad off me, to the floor, and then laying bad hip down on it.

He was smart, sometimes too smart for his own good. He was good natured and generally funny. I think I only saw him really pissed off one time. Some Jack Russell Terrier said something to Sunny at a park, and Sunny went ballistic. Had it not been for a firm grip on his leash, I think we’d have been eating Jack Russell Terrier soup.

The last 4 months, though, his hips had been bothering him a lot. He started piddling a bit sometimes when he got up. He’d had several bouts with a bladder infection as well. I attribute these problems perhaps to his drug abuse and also to the dramatic steps I took to have him cured of heart worms, when he was about 6. 

I always knew that the treatment for heart worms was going to shorten his life. I’m simply glad that he got to be 14 or 15 years old without too many problems.

After repeated treatment for bladder infections he got better. His hips on the other hand, kept getting worse. He was on painkillers more often but still had his spirit, goofiness, and joy in life. As his hips got worse, you could see him grimace when he got up more frequently, and the sudden pain would cause him to “leak” a bit. 

Cleaning up occasional leakage on the floor wasn’t a big deal. When I rebuilt the house after the fire, durable faux hardwood and tile floors replaced the carpeting of the former house. As the months went on, the leakage became more of a problem, but we adapted, after all, you do your best to make sure that your friends have a good life.

Last week Sunny was noticeably weaker. This week when I came home, he couldn’t get up. 

Eventually today, he rallied getting up to follow me around the house. Shortly thereafter he made himself comfortable on his cushion in the living room. With more of a crash landing than his usual graceful plop.

I’d noticed he was getting thinner over time, but the difference between last week and this was startling. His muscle mass was reducing at an alarming rate. Blood testing done last week confirmed that his kidneys were shutting down. The decline was rapid and brutal.

My surfer-stoner pup’s usual happy buzz was very harshed. 

It was time to let him go in as dignified as way as possible.

3 hours later, I’m lying on the floor of the vet’s office holding him, the way I’d done when he first came to live with me as an abused rescue. He was calm, laying there head on my arm. 15 minutes later, he stopped breathing, & I was crying in spite of knowing I’d done the right thing.

I pray that he’s playing in the Elysian fields with Butch and Etta who’d gone before him.

If I’m very lucky, one day, I’ll join them there, in a rough and tumble wrestling match like we used to have when we were all young.

Sunny my friend, eat all the mushrooms you want to. They can’t hurt you now.

I love you.  I’ll miss you terribly.

I’d been asleep for an hour last night. That in itself is a feat, with all the people wandering around on a Friday night, (weekends sleeping here is a tough thing) when I woke to the sound of something… my head registered it as a car coughing a few times while trying to start, then there were two loud BOOMS. 
I knew that sound. That was the sound of a gun. 

My guess is that it was something over a .40 caliber but couldn’t be more specific. It was close, too close. I rolled out of bed onto the floor and waited to see if there were more to come.

In the 5 to 10 seconds of silence that followed I wondered what the hell was going on. A minute later when I heard doors slamming all around the apartment complex I cautiously got up from the floor. I padded quietly to the nearest window and peered out. All the while thinking I was acting like an old person.

I could hear other occupants of the complex shouting and talking outside.

After a few minutes the sirens started and familiar blue & red lights were playing across the walls of my apartment. More people were joining the growing babble in the parking lot and on the sidewalks downstairs.

I decided to stay out of it, and went back to bed. Lying in bed with the strobing lights adding to the already too bright “Security Lights” shining on the walls through the window blinds, I realized I wasn’t going to get back to sleep anytime soon.

Car alarms started going off and I was out of bed again. 

The car alarms probably went off because someone leaned against or bumped some of the cars in the parking lot. 

Ok, time to go to the head. In the bathroom next door, the guy who lives there is taking a leak and talking on the phone. 

I wonder if he knows that I can hear every word he says in his bathroom? I can tell you his bathroom is the scene of an enviable amount of sex or a less enviable amount of masturbation, complete with some rather filthy dialog.

Anyhow, he’s on the phone talking to someone about the shooting and says, “There are cops everywhere, yeah I’ll be right over.” He didn’t, as far as I can tell come home last night. I’m guessing he probably took the opportunity to sully someone else’s bathroom.

I know I’m not going to get to sleep until all this dies down. I go to the cabinet and make myself a stiff drink. It’s 10:40 PM.

By 1:00 AM folks have gotten bored with their conversations in the parking lot and are finally returning to their apartments with all the attendant door slamming. 

I have to get up in 2 hours to go to work. If I wasn’t expected to be nice and patient on the phone I could actually work on that amount of sleep.

But as I consider it and weigh that I’m supposed to be empathetic to a substantial number of pathetic, perpetual, “victims”, I decide I’m not going to go in to work. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do talk to some really nice people, the problem is that they are in the minority and a larger number of people I talk to are the self appointed “Victim” class.

Yeah, they have a disease. Yeah, it sucks, but I personally know many people with the same disease and they’re not “Victims” they deal with it and get on with their lives. 

They’re good folks and their disease, like their sexuality or color of their skin simply IS. Their examples are in part why I thought working for this company would work for me. It never occurred to me that there might be a large percentage of the “Victim, Poor Me, Give me whatever I want” group. 

My bad, I know human nature better than that. Somehow I thought that a life threatening illness would galvanize them to be better people. Ah well, lesson learned. It has made me appreciate the people I know who are better people more.

I’ll read about the gunshots in the morning. Whoever did whatever, is of no consequence to me. But I am not going in to work. I just can’t muster even a simulation of empathy for the constant barrage of whiny people. 

As I lay there in the prison-like, lighting seeping through the window shades. I consider that my lease is coming to an end in June. If I don’t find another job by then I’m thinking I’ll at least find a new apartment. One hopefully that doesn’t have Shoji screen thin walls.

Finally I sleep…